Hannah and Andrew
Copyright© 2020 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 2: Evan
“Give me another FA-17, Andrew,” Evan Taylor said, still looking at the diagnostic read-out.
Behind him, Andrew’s resonant voice said firmly, “That is four of six bad units so far; perhaps it would be better to replace the entire assemblage.”
“Andrew, Andrew,” he said. “There’s a reason why I’m the boss and you’re the robot assistant.”
“Yes, sir. But it would certainly save time. You have promised this vessel would be ready in ten days. You are a week into the project and are less than 30% completed.”
“So, we’ll just work longer hours. What were you planning to do tonight anyway?”
“Stand here churning out FA-17s,” Andrew said, then added. “Obviously.” Evan reached out and took a completed unit from his gripper.
“Yep, pardner, you got it. Your function in life is to make chips; my function in life is to repair other people’s ships. Frankly, life stinks.”
“Probably a good thing, then, that you’ve never bothered to augment me with olfactory sensors.”
“Andrew, watch what you wish for!” He laughed, “Or I’ll retrofit you. It would only take a couple of hours.”
“It is true I’ve developed a mild taste for novelty; even so, I’m not sure I’m ready to throw over a long history of caution just yet.”
Evan slipped another of the computer modules from the navigator’s station into the tester, and sure enough, it too was bad. Without a word, Andrew handed him another FA-17. “A little earlier, there,” he told his assistant.
“It seems like a reasonable conclusion that we will need as many as I can make over the next two hours. Then,” Andrew said with dignity, “I’m going to need a recharge.” Andrew slipped the latest two bad modules into his gullet.
It had been an elegant idea and one that had made Colindra Drake a g’zillion dollars. Not that she hadn’t already made a few thousand g’zillions before that with her AIs and her colony ships. It was a simple matter to build an automated chip processing facility; these days, not very much cubic, either. Then she added a state-of-the-art AI, one of the best in the universe. That alone would have been worth b’zillions. But she added one last thing, the one no one else had ever considered. For 200 years, it had been possible to use biological devices to sort molecules and atoms; particularly large metallic atoms.
So, Andrew had in his guts a little furnace that would take an “ingested” FA-17, or any other chip, and reduce it to plasma, cool the ions, and the biologicals would neatly sort the metals. Then he could rebuild the FA-17, or any other chip, atom by atom. It wasn’t entirely that simple; Andrew took about 15 minutes to produce most varieties of circuit module, but about two hours to “digest” one. That and production required significantly less energy than digestion.
Two hours later, Evan flipped the switch on the navigator’s console, but the screen didn’t light up. “Wonderful,” he grumbled, “it says either the ship is offline or the connection to the ship is broken.”
“I believe you checked that yourself, sir,” Andrew said unhelpfully.
“Ship are you offline?” he asked the air around him.
“No, sir,” Came the immediate reply. “However, I am unable to contact the navigator’s station. Secondary sensors indicate there is a break in the cabling.”
“You knocked the connector loose with your knee,” a new voice said.
Evan looked instinctively, and sure enough, not only had he not put the safety clamp on, he really had knocked the connector akimbo. Two strikes! One of his worst days, ever! Evan realized, in the midst of his self-pity, that something else was wrong, and he turned his head to check out the origin of the voice.
Sitting cross-legged at one of the weapons positions a few feet away was a young girl. Ten or eleven was his first guess; she was awfully tiny. Her eyes met his, and Evan decided he hadn’t a clue as to her age; certainly nothing on her maturity level. “Hi, there!” he said politely.
“Hello.” She blushed, she actually blushed!
“Andrew, are my eyes deceiving me, or is someone sitting at the weapons position about a meter away from you?”
“There is a young human female there, yes.”
“Would you like to tell me why you forgot to mention her?”
Andrew didn’t hesitate a second, but then computer AIs rarely do. “I thought she was authorized. She came in forty minutes ago, sat there and said nothing; she just watched you intently. I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t know,” Evan said. “Whatever made you think I knew?”
Andrew was a computer; some questions short-circuit logic branches; asking a computer how it arrived at a decision was a necessary short circuit.
“Sir, in my experience, most humans, on entering a new situation, say something. When they are speaking to you, you say something back, usually rude, about not wanting to be interrupted. The young woman came in, sat down and said nothing. Since you were evidently known to her, I assumed the reverse was true. I am sorry I used incorrect assumptions.”
“It is,” the young woman said firmly into the silence that developed while Evan tried a little digestion of his own, “very rude to speak in front of someone as if they weren’t there.”
“Captain Taylor does that to me too,” Andrew said with a tinge of regret in his voice. Evan had, he thought, gone a step too far augmenting his AI.
He moved and snapped the connector into place, secured it properly, and looked back at them. “I’m being treated to my own medicine, aren’t I?”
Andrew knew a rhetorical question when he heard one. The girl knew when you were supposed to answer anyway and nodded.
“What can I do for you, miss?” Evan asked.
“I was curious.” She waved at the console. “I wanted to watch. The only other time I was on a starship, I was just a baby. I’ve always wanted to see one. I saw the hatch open, so I came in.”
“You passed Port Security?” Evan asked, curious.
She sniffed derisively. “No.”
Evan rolled his eyes; no? No? “Andrew, you said something about a recharge?”
“Sir, I have another half hour before it is required.”
“Well, the early bird catches the worm. Go get juiced, Andrew.”
“Yes, sir. Engaging worm drive.” Obedient, robots are. Sarcastic as hell, though. He was moving in a jerky fashion and several times came close to grazing a bulkhead. Never touched one, of course. Andrew thought worms were something that came out of a tequila bottle. He’d seen him juiced a time or too; not an example one is fond of having imitated.
“Had to get the children out of here,” Evan said, looking her right in the eye. “Andrew’s a little too literal. I’m surprised he hasn’t already reported you to Security.”
She cocked her head to one side, thinking, he thought. “He probably thinks that you lied to him about knowing me. Since you sent him off, he is certain of it.”
Evan blinked. Probably.
“You understand I have some small interest here?” he told her bluntly. “If, for some reason, there should be a security check and you were found with me, I’d be considered as guilty as you. The war’s over, so I’d probably not get shot. I’d just spend a long time painting rocks in the local jail.”
“They aren’t going to come here tonight. Not anywhere close.”
“Suppose there was a fire? An accident? You have that on your guard schedule?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.” Her voice was soft and sad. She got to her feet with a movement he might have managed if he’d practiced for years before he was her age and for maybe a year or so after. “Thank you for your time.”
“Stop!” Evan told her as she started for the door. “I have an interest, but I’m not didactic about it.” She looked at me curiously. He was curious as well; she knew that word too. What didn’t she know? “I was a Fleet officer and I have damn all little use for Port Security twits. If I’ve fooled them once, I’ve fooled them a thousand times. It was a game we played. I just haven’t played that game much lately.”
He waved his hand around. “You wanted to see a starship? How about a guided tour?”
Evan saw the hunger in her eyes; God, it was like he was her age again, when he’d felt the same thing! “It would be my pleasure,” Evan said, when she hesitated. “And, a special bargain rate for today: no questions on how you got here!”
She grinned then and nodded. “Please, yes.”
We were already at the top, the bridge deck. “Thucydides was a Fleet corvette -- a fast courier. Not much of a starship, except to get you quickly from Point A to Point B with a few words about what was going on at Point A. Some HDD star wants to use her for his personal transportation. Not mine to reason why, just fix her up.”
Evan waved to the various bridge positions, detailing them. For two hours we worked our way down to the engine room. Andrew sat glowering, hooked up to dockside power; just ticking over. “My real domain, Propulsion Engineering. I was a Fleet cruiser chief engineer when the war ended. They gave me a promotion, Andrew, and the boot the same day.”
“Thank you.” The young woman certainly didn’t say much.
“You’re welcome. You said,” he added, “you’ve been on a starship before. As a baby. Where were you from?”
Her eyes held his for a long second. “Lasker’s World.”
She ran her fingers over her ears, he hadn’t wanted to say anything, he’d noticed already; she kept her hair over them, but they weren’t your usual ears. Someone had sculpted what was left of the cartilage into a small, pointed elf-ears. Someone with a sense of whimsy, but not the least bit of human understanding.
“My transport was hit on the way out. They told me I was lucky to be alive, not once, but twice.”
Evan reached out to take her hand in his. “I was with Turbine Jensen on Missionary Ridge when we went out for Last Payback.” This wasn’t a subject for jokes or witticisms. Evan had never heard of anyone who’d flown with Turbine Jensen who joked about any of what we did. Few of them talked about it at all.
She pulled her hand out of his. “I don’t remember any of it. Just here, on Sanderson. Got nothing here I want to remember.” She waved her hand at the ship. “I want to remember this, though. Always.” She stepped back and saluted. “Thank you, sir.”
The war, Evan thought, had been filled with defeats and victories. Lasker’s World had occurred when we thought we were past the defeats, with only victories ahead. Lasker’s had, for several reasons, been the last straw. Lasker’s hadn’t been the first planet the Dracha had destroyed, not by a long shot. But we’d grown complacent, slowly beating the Dracha back. No planet had been lost for nearly 15 years before Lasker’s. We’d lost Lasker’s and then half a dozen others. Major systems, another five per cent of the human race had died. It had served to concentrate our attention admirably. Not to mention, utterly seal the fate of the Dracha.
Turbine Jensen had struck the one place the Dracha had never expected to be struck, but it had been an empty gesture. The effort the Dracha had expended to launch the attacks on Lasker’s and the other worlds had exhausted them. They were only a hollow shell and after Jensen had cut their heart out the war ended in three months.
“I should go,” she said, abruptly.
“Probably just a bit past your bedtime,” Evan said, but laughing.
She grinned back. “I’m pretty much of a night person.”
He decided that there was no need to ask if she could get out okay; he knew she didn’t want any curiosity in that direction. “Just a sec.” He reached into my bag, took out a chip, and tapped the buttons. “You can come again, if you want,” he told her. “I’ll be working on this slug pile another couple of days. Please, if you do, use the chit. You can walk through the gate. No one will bother you.”
“I can come back?” Evan saw that unholy glow in her eyes again.
He nodded. “Anyone who can sit still for the better part of an hour watching me work and not kibitz is always welcome.”